Archive for the 'Productivity' Category
If ever anything could break me of the habit of getting wrapped up in useless obsessive minutia, this is it.
You know what I mean by useless and obsessive, right? Like wanting to fire off an angry letter at the idiot retailer and then spending the next two hours telling him how better to conduct business instead of concentating on my own business.
Or politely listening to someone blather on endlessly in a meeting about his special interest when it should be taken care of in a side meeting with one other person–who isn’t me.
Or how about simply spending time worrying about something I can’t control?
Here’s the tool I’m using to break me of that nasty habit: The Meeting Miser at Payscale Tools — http://www.payscale.com/meeting-miser?tk=mm_hmpg02
The idea is that you input the names and salaries of the people attending your meeting and keep the calculator running next to the briefing charts everyone’s staring at for the duration of the meeting. (Where was this when I needed it last week for the 7.5 hour meeting I was stuck in?!) You get an idea of how many dollars are being wasted when the meeting gets off course–or maybe the meeting isn’t needed at all.
My personal use for it, though, is to keep it on my computer screen and whenever I start to obsess about something out of my control or I get that phone call from someone who’s bored and wants me to spend precious time entertaining them, I can start the clock and see how much of my time is worth that I’m wasting. For me, quantifying my worth makes decisions on where to spend my time so much easier.
I guarantee you’ll dig yourself out of the worst of behaviors much more quickly when you assign a value to your time.
“Someday” Is Now
November 4th is “someday.”
I got the idea from a couple of fellow bloggers who asked if I ever thought about doing some trivial task “someday.” I have a long mental list, but not a written one, though I’m likely to start keeping one for whenever the next “someday” comes.
You know the list, right?
Someday, when I have time, I’m going to install the pull-out,
under-cabinet wire baskets I bought for the kitchen trashcan and the cookware.
Someday, when I have time, I’m going to repair the bathroom wallpaper that’s not glued down flat anymore and I’m going to put up the wallpaper border in the girls’ bathroom.
Someday, when I have time, I’m going to trim those shrubs in the wooded area of the back yard, and I’m going to remove some of the low-hanging limbs on the little oak near my office.
Someday, when I have time, I’m going to move the last of the excess inventory in the office to the supply closet and then go through those three big boxes of papers I’ve kept locked away for years.
Someday….
Most of my “someday” jobs are the really, really trivial ones around the house that don’t matter but pile up and tug at my attention, and I’d love to get them out of the way once and for all. They just sooooo far down the priority list that they’ll never get done at this rate.
So I’ve declared November 4th as “Someday,” the day I will work on all those silly, tiny, annoying little tasks I’ve put off until someday when I have time. And while I’m doing my someday list? I’ll listen to an audiobook or class that I’ve been putting off for someday, too.
How to Make It Better
By the end of the first hour at the office, I was feeling overwhelmed and didn’t like it very much. Not that anything was particularly any weightier than usual. It was just the annoying little time and energy consumers that plague most work days and add unnecessary stress. Most of them are chores that have to be taken care of and only I can take care of them. No choices there.
So how could I make it better or was I just damned to a miserable day? You know what? I didn’t want a miserable day. There had to be some way of making it better—besides berating myself for not using enough positive thinking.
That’s when I began to catalog things that could make the day better. Many of them were things I didn’t have any control over, though I listed those, too, because you never know what might show up or bring things into your control unexpectedly. The surprising thing was how much of my day I actually did have control over and could “make better” without the syrupy nature of so many people who espouse positive thinking. The terminology of “what would make it better” broke through the mandate of a disingenuous “if you want a good day, you must think happy thoughts.” Read the rest of this entry »